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February 26, 2013

Some key points from the purloined Al Qaida paper on drones

The al Qaida tip sheet on how to hide from drones has been made available online - PDF, via Yahoo, among other places. And while some observers have tried to find humor in the advice about hiding vehicles with mud and grass, There are other parts that deserve attention.

First off, they know America quite well. They nailed Obama's rationale with their explanation of why the drone policy has come to replace troops on the ground:

The Americans fully realize that they are in the 10th year of war and that
they were economically exhausted and suffered human losses and they were confronted
with public pressure backed by the Congress in a way that it made the honorable and
responsible withdrawal from the war as a prime goal of the White House. But this does not
mean that abandoning the war, rather, they pushed them to seek alternative military
strategies that enable them to continue the war without being economically depleted or
suffer human losses and avoid the American public opinion pressure. Here the war of the
drone appeared as a perfect solution.

The document goes on to compare the purchase price of a drone with that of an F15 and the cost of a mission expense with that of an F4 Phantom. Why the F4, one might ask. Maybe it's a coincidence, but the nation of Iran owns many of those, having acquired them before the Islamic radicals took over in the 70s.

The paper continues:

So what are going to do? I believe that foiling this strategy depends on three things: The formation of a public opinion to stand against the attacks, deterring of spies and tactics of
deception and blurring.

By "formation of a public opinion" they're talking about American public opinion. They may have the false impression that they were quite successful at that during the Bush administration. However, they don't seem to realize how much partisan politics played a role. The public pressure evaporated once a Democrat was elected president. And it doesn't seem likely that al Qaida could rekindle it, at least until a Republican once again takes the presidency.

We aren't going to dwell on each of the points made in the document, however these two are quite interesting.

1 – It is possible to know the intention and the mission of the drone by using the Russianmade “sky grabber” device to infiltrate the drone’s waves and the frequencies. The device
is available in the market for $2,595 and the one who operates it should be a computerknow-
how.

2 – Using devices that broadcast frequencies or pack of frequencies to disconnect the contacts and confuse the frequencies used to control the drone. The Mujahideen have had successful experiments using the Russian-made “Racal.”

"Racal" was a British radio manufacturer. And Skygrabber downloads transmissions from satellites. Have the Russians retrofitted these things for anti-drone use? Someone find Hillary's "reset" button!

More:

12 – Maintain complete silence of all wireless contacts.

Dang. They must have watched "Wired" reruns.

Then they finish it off with public opinion once again:

We start kidnapping Western citizens in any spot in the world, whether in the Islamic Maghreb, Egypt, Iraq or any other easy kidnapping places and the only demand is the halt of attacks on civilians in Yemen which is a just and humanitarian demand that will create world support and a public opinion pressure in America as they are being hurt again.

Reason enough for Western citizens to avoid those easy kidnapping places.